Economical IC memory has recently appeared on market due to the advancement of LSI technology, and memory cards using IC memory have also been developed.
It is difficult to incorporate in the memory too many sorts of embroidering data such as alphanumeric characters, (i.e. figures and letters), Chinese characters, point patterns and others. In the operator's personal discretion, some characters or patterns are not used at all.
The operator may input predetermined characters or patterns (for example, her or his name or signature) but cannot input point patterns created by the operator.
An embroidering machine has been proposed which stores the embroidering data in the above mentioned memory card. That is, the figures and their punctuation marks (e.g., colon, semi-colon, parentheses, period and so on), the alphabetic letters and their punctuation marks, or the point patterns which are to be used frequently, are stored in one sheet of the memory card of masked ROM type, and the operator's name (Chinese characters or signature) and the point pattern created by the operator are stored in the memory card of programmable ROM type.
In such a manner, the operator may deal with many letters and patterns without problems with respect the space or cost, and it is sufficient for the operator to buy the memory cards only.
The known computer controlled embroidering machine having the memory card or the computer controlled sewing machine (for example, Laid open Japanese patent applications No. 215391/85 and No. 41488/86) have the following disadvantages:
(1) If desired letters or characters to be embroidered are scattered in a plurality of memory cards, they have to be stored in each of the memory cards via RAM, and the power source is turned off after embroidering. The power source turned on after exchanging the memory cards, and the remaining letters are stored.
(2) In order to prevent the memory card from slipping out from the embroidering machine, while processing "ACCESS" of the memory card, a solenoid holds the memory card in place to avoid breakage of the within the memory card or IC memory within the main body to be connected to a bus.
Therefore, it took much time to select and store the letters and it was troublesome to arrange newly created letters in conformity with already created letters. The amount of wasted thread was increased since the embroidering frame was moved during an initial setting operation when applying the electric source. In addition, the machine frame is large sized because it supports the solenoid.